By JACK EWING

Published: May 1, 2013

4:58 p.m. | Updated FRANKFURT — Shares in Deutsche Bank rose for a second day after the bank sold 2.96 billion euros ($3.87 billion) in new stock on Tuesday to help it bolster the size of its capital reserves.

Deutsche Bank has long faced criticism that its capital buffers, the money that banks set aside to absorb losses in a crisis, were inadequate and that it carried too much risk from derivatives and other volatile investment banking products.

But since taking over last year, Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, the bank’s co-chief executives, have been hoarding profit and selling assets to raise the proportion of capital to money at risk. Bank officials insisted that the share sale was not done in response to pressure from regulators in Europe or the United States.

“It was our decision,” Mr. Jain said on Tuesday during a conference call with analysts. “There was no gun to the head.”

Still, the move will go a long way toward ending the bank’s reputation as one of Europe’s riskiest and least-capitalized lenders. The new capital will allow it to rank near the top among large European banks in the size of its reserves, rather than near the bottom, and to comfortably meet new regulatory requirements.

The bank also raised more than it aimed for when it first announced the share sale on Monday. Institutional investors paid 32.90 euros a share for the new equity, Deutsche Bank said, a discount to the market price in Frankfurt on Tuesday of 35.03 euros.

Shares of Deutsche Bank, the largest German lender, rose 5 percent in New York trading on Tuesday on expectations that the share sale will clear the way for higher dividend payments, even though an increase in the number of shares lowers each shareholder’s cut of profits.

Mr. Jain and Stefan Krause, the bank’s chief financial officer, portrayed the share issue as a turning point that would set the stage for the bank to focus less on its baggage from the financial crisis and more on growth and profit.

“We could see where a capital raise would bring us to the point where the capital issue was off the table,” Mr. Jain said.

European banks have as a rule taken longer to put the financial crisis behind them than American banks. The European lenders have had to deal with the burden of euro zone debt, but they also faced less pressure from regulators to confront their problems. Lately, though, there have been signs that some of the bigger banks are returning to health.

Investors had other good news to cheer from the bank this week. On Monday, the bank reported that net profit in the first quarter rose nearly 18 percent, to 1.66 billion euros, from 1.41 billion euros in the period a year earlier.

Though revenue rose a modest 2 percent, to 9.4 billion euros, the bank was able to cut costs. Mr. Krause said on the conference call that the bank expected to save about a billion euros over the full year.

Some analysts were still cautious about the bank’s long-term prospects. The bank faces uncertainty over the European economy, which is stuck in recession. It also continues to address an array of legal proceedings that could be costly to resolve.

“Whilst we still see risks from litigation, regulation and the macro environment, the strengthened capital position should put the group in a better position to deal with these challenges going forward,” analysts at Credit Suisse wrote in a note to clients. Credit Suisse upgraded Deutsche Bank shares to neutral, from underperform.

Deutsche Bank also said it would raise an additional 2 billion euros later in the year in the form of so-called hybrid equity, a form of debt that converts to shares in time of crisis and can thus be counted toward capital. The bank is waiting for German regulators to clarify rules for such instruments before it issues them.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.